Korotich, Vitaliy Alekseevich

He was born on May 26, 1936 in Kiev , where he graduated from school number 92 to them with a gold medal. Ivan Franko with teaching a number of subjects in English.

In 1953, Vitaliy Korotich entered the Kiev State Medical Institute named after academician A.A. Bogomolets, who graduated with honors in 1959 .

After completing an internship, he worked as a cardiologist in a rural hospital (as described in the book “ Their Kremlin ”) and at the Institute of Clinical Medicine named after Strazhesko , where he conducted scientific work. He graduated from graduate school.

In 1967 he joined the Communist Party .

Literary activity

He graduated from the Kiev Institute of Foreign Languages.

In 1966, Korotich was elected to the board of the Union of Writers of the USSR and secretary of the Union of Writers of Ukraine.

He worked as the editor-in-chief of the youth magazine " Ranok " (similar to the Russian magazine " Change " ) from 1966 to 1967 .

He conducted radio broadcasts and was published in the local and central press, including in the all-Union weekly Literaturnaya Gazeta . V. Korotich ’s poem “The Last Request of the Old Lyrnik” (“Stopping the Desecration of the Old Lyrnik”), translated from Ukrainian by Yunna Morits, became the famous song of the Nikitin ’s spouses “ Transfer me through the Maidan ” ^{[4] [5]} , which was performed by many singers ( Galina Besedina , Alexander Malinin and others).

In 1969, he was not re-elected secretary of the joint venture of Ukraine, and was also removed from the board of the joint venture of the USSR - according to Korotich, because he "said and wrote something wrong" ^[6] .

In 1978, he became editor of the journal Vsesvit (the Ukrainian counterpart of the journal Foreign Literature ). Engaged in translations.

In 1981, he was again elected secretary of the board of the joint venture of the USSR, having remained in this position until 1991 ^[7] .

Spark Magazine

In May 1986, the Central Committee of the CPSU (at the suggestion of the Secretary of the Central Committee Yegor Ligachev ) appointed V. Korotich the chief editor of the all-Union magazine " Spark ". Within two years, the circulation of the magazine grew from 1.5 million to 4.5 million copies. Instead of party officialdom, a magazine appeared for the general reader. In the book “Red Dozen. The collapse of the USSR: they were opposed ”is described as“ an ascetic of the perestroika model ” ^[8] .

On the official site "Spark", the work of V. Korotich in the journal ^[9] is evaluated in this way:

With his arrival, the magazine turned 180 degrees. It is difficult in world history to recall a publication that would have the same strong influence on the country's political life as the “Light” of the perestroika era. The journalism “Spark” has become a school of democracy in a country hungry for freedom. Expositions have become the cult genre of all journalism. The “Spark” magazine began this epic ... The era of " glasnost ", the change in the political formation, the collapse of the Soviet power - first in people's minds, and then in real life, is associated with it.

For this editorial activity, the American magazine World Press Review ^[10] awarded Korotich in 1989 the title of “ International Editor of the Year ” ^[11] for 1988 - a title awarded annually to non-US editors, for courage in deepening the freedom and responsibility of the press, in asserting human rights and for excellent and true journalism.

The delegate of the XIX Conference of the CPSU (1988). In 1989 he was elected People's Deputy of the USSR, became a member of the Interregional Group . In 1990, he visited the Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem-Mendl Schneerson , who blessed him with the US dollar ^[12] .

On August 19, 1991, while in the USA, he handed over a ticket to Moscow, fearing reprisals from the Emergency Committee .
On August 26 of the same year, by the decision of the journalist's meeting, Ogonyka was relieved of his duties as editor-in-chief for cowardice ^[13] .

The assessment of this forced resignation is mixed in the professional community. The rating of the magazine did not subsequently reach Korotich’s records.

He gave a farewell conceptual interview to the newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets (The Redneck Hour ^[14] ), which was noticed by colleagues and the public.

Abroad

From 1991 to 1998, Vitaly Korotich was a professor at Boston University . According to the writer’s own definition, it was a seven-year solitude ^[15] :

One conversation I had with Gorbachev ... now I can send anyone anywhere and read. He looked at me so frightenedly and said: but I cannot do this . I spoke a lot on this subject with our mutual friend Joseph Kobzon. I said: why do you need this business, this eternal participation in all parties. “ You do not understand: you will not appear for a week, they will forget you .” Figs with them, if they forget, if I am like that for a week ... In short, eight years of work at Boston University trained me for solitude.

In addition to the USA, he lectured in Australia, Mexico and Canada ^[3] .

Homecoming

In the field of Russian media, he remained a newsmaker during 1992-1995 , being a Boston columnist for the Moscow newspaper New Look ^{[16] [17] [18]} . After the period of “American solitude”, he did not return to editorial work in Moscow.

From a letter from Vitaly Korotich to Yevgeny Dodolev , published in the newspaper Marina Lesko “New Look” ^[17] :

Kiev period

He is called the master of modern Ukrainian journalism ^[19] . At the beginning of the XXI century, Korotich leads the Kiev edition in Russian (he heads the editorial board of the all-Ukrainian newspaper Gordon Boulevard ^[20] ), and is registered in Moscow. All this postulates a special look at the relationship between the two countries, which he himself noted in an interview with Svetlana Sorokina on April 29, 2006 ^[15] :

Ukraine is accustomed to Russia inextricably ... But the search for some of its dominants, nationalism in its Western Ukrainian version , of course, has compromised itself. The desire for Europe ... everyone understands that this would be good, but no one needs to take Ukraine to maintain in Europe. Such France in terms of population, size, well, who will take it for maintenance? ... A kind country that does not need to be repelled from itself. Moreover, she does not strive for this at all. And even the fact that Yanukovych and Yushchenko are now entering into some kind of business relationship ... and indeed, when we declare Tymoshenko the half-Armenian as the largest Ukrainian nationalist ... No hostility should be provoked, no need to come to Crimea to say when we will take it from you.

Vitaly Korotich has repeatedly published works of a socio-political nature both about the USSR and about foreign countries (“Oh Canada!”, “Lenin, Volume 54”, “Do not shoot the pianist!”, “Cubature of an egg”, “Bridge”, "The face of hate" and others).

Before perestroika, their ideological content and orientation fully corresponded to the world outlook of the Soviet communist, which was then Korotich: they glorified the achievements of socialism in the USSR and Eastern Europe, painted the "horrors of capitalism" in the USA and other Western countries, condemned "bourgeois morality", etc. P.

His poem Lenin, Volume 54 is imbued with enthusiastic pathos at the leader of the October Revolution, V. I. Lenin, and the Communist Party led by him. ^[21]

Similar motives are also present in the poem "History" ( 1980 ) and many other poetic works of the author.

V. Korotich’s journalistic prose of that time also differed little in its political content from the works of other prominent Soviet publicist communists — Yu. Zhukov , V. Zorin , G. Borovik, and others — so that her main idea could be expressed in the words of Korotich:

• “ We must know this and remember: in the Soviet Union the dreams of all working people on earth were realized ” ^[22] .
• “ ... for six decades of our history, we have substantively proved how justly the life of a society conceived by the greatest of revolutions — the October Revolution — can be arranged ” ^[23] .
• “ The struggle for social and national justice in the world is progressing more successfully because people see and objectively perceive the Soviet example, an example of a power where the principles of such justice were not only won, but also enshrined in the Constitution ” ^[22] .

In one of his most famous books of that period, “The Face of Hate,” for which the author was awarded the USSR State Prize in 1985, V. Korotich severely condemned the “capitalist mores” of the USA, comparing them with “social progress” in the Soviet Union . V. Korotich branded any criticism of the USSR in this and his other books as “malicious slander” and “anti-Soviet”: “Impudent anti-Soviet of the most varied levels is spinning, saturating the air like a flock of taiga heinous people. It should not be, it cannot; and so it has been going on practically without interruptions since the end of 1917 ” ^[24] .

“This morning, President Reagan once again threatened our country with his expressive Hollywood finger and vilified us in every way. <...> after the president, as a rule, various small mongrels are connected ... ” ^[24]

However, after in 1986 the Central Committee of the CPSU appointed V. Korotich the chief editor of the magazine " Spark ", the content and tone of his statements and works, as well as the materials of the magazine edited by him, changed radically: now life in the USSR was severely criticized - like modern and for all 70 years of the reign of the Communists — the United States and other “bourgeois” (in the terminology of Korotich’s pre-perestroika books) countries began to present themselves mainly on the positive side and even set an example to follow.

In fact, V. Korotich often wrote the exact opposite of what he had said several years before, and published in the journal the same materials that had previously been branded as “anti-Soviet” and “slanderous,” moreover, emigrants from the USSR, who were previously B Korotich did not name it otherwise than “traitors,” “deserters,” etc. (for example, A. Solzhenitsyn , whom V. Korotich called “The Soviet Deserter” in the book “The Person of Hate” ^[24], contrary to the fact that Solzhenitsyn did not left his homeland voluntarily, and was sent by nasi arrogantly). At the same time, V. Korotich remained a member of the CPSU until its ban in 1991.

After the suppression of the August putsch of 1991 (and the subsequent ban of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union), V. Korotich’s statements became openly anti-communist :

“The Petrograd coup of 1917 was primarily a moral disaster. It is the immorality of the system that led us to live so poorly ” ^[17] .

“Nobody, except for us, undertook to build a society where“ man to man is a friend, comrade and brother. ” But, apparently, no one with such success has built a society where man to man is a wolf ” ^[17] .

“The system was vicious, non-viable, gangster. It was necessary to fill up all this to hell ” ^[25] (about the pre-perestroika system in the USSR).

One of the last assessments by V. Korotich of the Communist Party, its ideology and the Soviet system is as follows:

" Stalin and his party sacrificed the people to their ravings, without giving him anything promised - neither peace, nor land to the peasants, nor factories for workers, nor food to satiety, nor housing, nor clothing " ^[26] .

Vitaliy Korotich signed a collective letter to President Viktor Yanukovych from representatives of the Ukrainian intelligentsia on August 3, 2011 . The letter, in particular, speaks of the president’s support in his fight against corruption and support for the reforms carried out by Yanukovych ^[27] :

• Order of Honor ( December 16, 1999 ) - for services in the field of the press and in connection with the 100th anniversary of the first issue of the journal ^[28]
• Order of the October Revolution (1984)
• The Order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise of the V degree ( Ukraine , May 26, 2011 ) - for outstanding personal contribution to the enrichment of the Ukrainian cultural and artistic heritage, many years of fruitful creative and socio-political activity ^{[29] [30]}
• Republican Prize of the Komsomol of Ukraine named after M. Ostrovsky (1972)
• Republican Prize named after P. Tychina “Feeling of a united family” (1978)
• State Prize of the Ukrainian SSR named after T. G. Shevchenko
• Prize of the joint venture of the USSR named after B.N. Polevoy (1983)
• Prize of the joint venture of the USSR named after A.N. Tolstoy
• International Prize named after Y. Fuchik (1984)
• USSR State Prize (1985) - for the novel "The Face of Hate"
• Lenin Komsomol Prize
• Weintal Prize (1987, Washington , DC, Georgetown University)
• The title of " International Editor of the Year " (International Editor of the Year) for 1988 (awarded by the American magazine " World Press Review ")
• Honored Worker of Culture of Poland
• PEN Member

In different years V. Korotich was:

• Co-Chair of the April Writing Movement
• Vice President of the international movement "Artists for Nuclear Disarmament" (since 1986)
• Member of the editorial boards of the newspaper “ Russian Courier ” , the magazine “Observer”
• People's Deputy of the USSR (1989-1991)

Now is:

• Chairman of the Commission on Literary Heritage K. I. Chukovsky
• Chairman of the Editorial Board of the Kiev newspaper "Boulevard" (since 1999)

• Father: Alexei Stepanovich Korotich (1909-1985) - Professor, Microbiologist. Mother: Zoya Leonidovna Korotich (1910) - pathophysiologist, doctor med. sciences ^[7] .
• Wife: Zinaida Alexandrovna (1935).
• Three sons: Andrei (1959-1971) - tragically died from electric shock; Vitaliy (1971-2011) - died of a serious long illness; Nikita (1975). Vitaliy studied at the journalism department of Moscow State University. The youngest son, Nikita, did not follow in his father's footsteps, but chose the specialty of an international economist.
• Three grandchildren.

• V. Korotich played a cameo role in the Soviet feature film " Predators " (1991).

In August 2011, the so-called “ letter of ten ” was published - a letter from the Ukrainian intelligentsia in support of the policy of President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych. One of the ten signatories was Vitaly Korotich ^{[31] [32]} .

• Their Kremlin

• Big biographical encyclopedia
• Songs of V. Korotich
• Interview V. Korotich tabloid "Dusya"
• Article by V. Korotich
• A. Galinsky On Bold Editor-in- Chiefs
• V. Lebedev. By the arrival and departure of Korotich.
• V. Lebedev. Former petrel of perestroika (open letter to Vitaly Korotich)
• V. Lebedev Separation will be without sorrow
• “In Russia, Soviet power has not gone anywhere” - Interview with Radio BBC, 06/02/2005
• Interview Korotich "FACTS"